


The shadow to my light

by redlipsredledger



Series: We go together or we don't go down at all [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, MCU Fix, Not Canon Compliant, Parent Clint Barton, Parent Natasha Romanov, Parenthood, Protective Clint Barton, Protective Natasha Romanov, Some Comic Elements, Uncle Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:01:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21733411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlipsredledger/pseuds/redlipsredledger
Summary: This is a Prequel to my wholeee Clint & Nat have a kid thing. This is how that comes about/how everyone finds out and such.This is how The Avengers learn Clint and Natasha are married during the attack by Ultron.[Condensed obvs or I'll be here all day xD I cannot rewrite a whole movie, sorry!]
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Betty Ross, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: We go together or we don't go down at all [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566415
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	1. Do you know the line that I'd walk for you?

Sitting in the Shawarma restaurant with everyone after a huge battle? Well there were worse ways to celebrate not dying; New York was a goddamn mess around them but there really wasn't much they could do about it. Stark had already liaised with the SHIELD cleanup team and he'd offered funding to the mayor and that was about all any of them could do; Clint had volunteered services when it came to rebuilding things, he quite liked to do it. It gave him something to do when he was bored.

He was actually pretty good at it, he'd learned late teens when he'd been utterly bored one summer and decided to do the whole house-building for the less fortunate thing; it wasn't something he tended to talk about all that much. He wasn't the renowned philanthropist, that was Tony. Still, he didn't mind helping to fix the damage around him. Natasha however had done the same as Tony did: She offered funding. That had raised a few eyebrows from Tony, Bruce and Steve but Clint knew better. He knew Natasha was a mystery to even those that knew her but she'd accrued quite a bit over the years and she didn't spend all that much. She didn't even own a goddamn car.

She could drive, she just didn't like to. 

He reached out to squeeze her leg gently and she offered him a smile, the others were chatting and he mouthed _are you okay?_ to her, she shrugged her shoulders and he frowned softly. He knew that she was worried about him. He'd tried his best to reassure her in whatever way he could but there wasn't all that much he could do around everyone else. They'd agreed that what they were would remain off book and wouldn't impact missions out there in the field.

When they were alone though that was a different matter entirely. They didn't have to hide anything then.

It had been a rough few days and in truth every goddamn muscle in her body was screaming; she hadn't been put through _this_ much in a while but that wasn't the part of it all that bothered her, it was the way that she came face to face with that monster and he'd tried his best to taunt her; she'd acted like it hadn't at all but she was lying to herself and to everyone else. 

_"Is this love, Agent Romanoff?"_

_"Love is for children, I owe him a debt."_

Yes, she loved him. She loved him very much and that was something that Natasha hadn't quite figured out how to deal with, not even after the two years that they'd been married now. She hated seeing him go through that, she'd hated seeing him have his mind screwed with and it had taken every ounce of her not to just shoot the son of a bitch in the head there and then. Natasha was better trained than most people gave her credit for. She found herself withdrawing into herself unknowingly as she stared off into space.

_"Do you know what it's like to be unmade?"_

_"You know that I do."_

She winced. A physical reaction to knowing exactly what it was to have your brain put into a blender and come out of it with nothing in there that was even remotely _you_ anymore. Just an implant, a new persona, a mission and nothing in there that was even close to what you'd been before. Just another toy, another doll to be made into whatever someone happened to need that day and then picked apart again when it was all over.

He noticed, of course he did. His hand reached for hers and he twined their fingers, giving her hand a gentle squeeze to reassure her that she was okay. She wasn't there anymore. She didn't have to run the way she had before and she didn't have to go through what she did anymore; no one was paying any attention to them anyway. They were all talking and laughing with the exception of Steve who seemed to be watching their interaction curiously.

The Soldier was still new to all of this; Natasha felt for him if she was going to be honest. She felt more connected to Steve Rogers than she did Tony, Bruce or Thor. She knew what he must be going through, she knew what it was like not to recognise the world anymore.

Yes, Natasha Romanoff was one mystery after another, not even what was written in her SHIELD file was true. It was just what she'd wanted them to know and she was perfectly okay with that, no one needed to know the truth. It was her secret to keep and she did so, she kept her secrets close so that no one could use them to pull apart the life that she'd worked so hard to build for herself.

She had spent years searching for somewhere to belong. Who'd have known that a man holding a bow pointed dead at her heart would be the one that would offer her a hand and a way out; it'd be poetic in its own way if it wasn't as crazy as the rest of their lives. No one knew her, not really. They knew the persona she wanted them to know, they knew the covers she'd developed over the years like the one that she'd used to get an in with Tony but no one really knew who _she_ was except for Clint.

He knew everything because she'd decided if she was going to give it a real shot with him, he should at least know who he was getting involved with.

He didn't seem to care though which was nice, she thought he was foolish if she was going to be honest with herself but she'd never had what she did with him before; it wasn't about anything else, it wasn't about circumstance or anything like that it was a naturally evolved relationship from best friends to far more though he was still her best friend. He'd always be her best friend, he'd promised her that. No matter what else they were, he'd promised her that he'd always be her best friend.

She'd be glad when they could get out of here and they could breathe again. Or she could breathe again, she really wasn't sure at this point. All she knew was that today? Today had wiped her out and she felt a pressing need to work it the hell out and she needed a shower. Badly. Her hair smelled like smoke and she hated it. 

Needless to say she was glad to crawl back to their apartment later that day and get a goddamn shower and just sleep. All she wanted was sleep, he seemed to share that sentiment because within an hour they'd both crashed out and that? That was how Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff handled their day after the battle of New York.

* * *

Life was pretty much standard after that; the two of them had gone back to missions and life as usual only really checking in with everyone else when they needed to. In truth she was in no hurry at all to go through any of that shit again but life had other plans; they'd gotten news about HYDRA cells causing havoc around the world and so, Avengers Assemble and it was time once again to wade into a goddamn war, not that she minded. She'd been cooped up for a couple weeks and she was starting to get restless; it'd do her some good to have something to focus on. Maybe taking those vacation days hadn't been such a good idea after all.

Clint had tried to appeal for one of those cheesy tourist-y road trips but she'd told him right away that she wasn't keen on the idea; he'd get his way eventually though. She couldn't take the disappointed look on his face and she'd been close to giving in when they'd gotten the call to go in. In truth, she was a little bit glad for that, too.

And then he got taken down.

Immediately it felt like her heart was in her throat and she stood there and watched him fall to the floor and she fought for composure; she came to a skidding halt by his side and fell to her knees beside him, she made sure that everyone was out of earshot.

"Don't you dare die on me out here. I'm not ready for that _Til death do us part_ crap just yet." She whispered softly.

A weak chuckle broke his lips and he shook his head.

"Not a chance." he replied. 

She was glad that they'd gotten him back to Stark Tower after that, she hadn't left the room the whole time as Helen worked to patch Clint up but she'd passed it off as just looking out for her best friend, making a quip about how pretending to need him really brought the team together which had made him laugh but both of them knew that needing him held her together. He turned to her as the machine went to work patching him up, complaining about how he was going to be all plastic now and she'd laughed and shook her head.

"As long as you're okay..." She didn't get the chance to finish.

Helen walked back into the room and she glanced at her instead.

"He gonna be okay, Doc?" Natasha immediately snapped back to being snarky. Helen nodded.

She hoped no one noticed her shoulders sag with relief. She was going to give him hell for being so stupid when they got home later but for now, she mulled about the tower leaving him to get patched up trading playful jibes with Tony and listening to Steve regale a very curious Thor on stories of his war days; it was about as close as they'd come to normal for a little while.

Getting home that night had been a relief for the both of them and she was ready to call it quits for a little while and just rest up; she theorised that there was a strong chance he needed it after what had happened out there in the field even if he'd been intent on telling her that he was just fine; she wasn't going to stop worrying no matter how many times he insisted that she had nothing to worry about and in truth he found it quite sweet, she didn't maintain the bravado around him and he was glad for that.

Life - it would appear - had other plans, or Tony Stark had other plans anyway because he'd insisted on throwing some kind of goddamn celebratory party that they'd beat the HYDRA cell and recovered Loki's scepter in the process. 

Natasha wasn't exactly the social butterfly type but when Tony Stark had insisted on throwing a goddamn party, Clint had literally insisted that they go along simply for lack of anything else to do that night; she'd argued of course and told him that Netflix was a far more appealing option in a rather grumpy way because she definitely wasn't keen on the idea but after everything that he'd been through, she conceded and he'd gotten his way and so, the two of them sat on opposite sides of the room in Stark Tower once again acting like nothing else but best friends.

That didn't mean they weren't hyper aware of where the other one was at all times. She meandered toward the bar after a while and she listened to Steve Rogers as he talked to her, asking her if she happened to bother dating at all and she shrugged her shoulders. 

"There is this one guy..." She teased playfully before a chuckle broke her lips and she shrugged.

"I'm not the dating type, boy scout." She patted Steve on the shoulder as she walked past him and made her way over to sit down with everyone else.

Within minutes, it was back to acting like nothing at all had happened a few days ago, it was back to trading stories, playful banter and messing around with Thor's hammer... And then Robots. 

"Seriously?" She'd hissed at Tony as she dived to the side to avoid being blown up. Again.

Goddammit, why couldn't he just stop playing with things that he didn't understand? His whole "Protect the world" thing was going to wind up getting them all killed.

And things had gotten no better after that. In fact they'd gotten ten times worse until they were stood on an old freighter ship having their heads screwed with by a Superpowered girl while a killer robot that Bruce and Tony had unleashed was trying to kill them; she'd taken the hit pretty bad because it had taken her back to a place she _never_ wanted to be again and Clint had been the first to notice how broken it had made her. She wished that she could just throw it off like it was nothing but she couldn't. It had messed with her in ways that none of them could have seen coming and that goddamn thing had access to all of their files.

Nowhere in the city was safe which left just one option: Home. She could see from Clint's expression that he hated the idea just as much as she did but there was no other option, they needed to be somewhere they could regroup, somewhere off the files, somewhere safe. Somewhere that no one could find and so, Waverly Ohio was their destination and Clint Barton landed a SHIELD Quinjet in his front garden and all but carried his wife onto their front porch as he opened the door and glanced inside.

"Katie?" He called gently.

She walked toward the door and her eyes fell on Natasha, she looked horrified at best.

"Oh God." She hadn't seen Natasha look that bad since a mission that had gone bad about a year ago.

"Little help?" Clint gestured for her to take the other side of Natasha and they helped her inside.

Everyone else followed, but Tony was the first to say absolutely anything, questioning just where they were which prompted a deep sigh from the archer as he rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around.

"This is home." He explained.

Kate walked in from the kitchen to place a herbal tea in front of Natasha before she glanced at Clint.

"Everyone, this is Kate Bishop. Kate, these are the Avengers." 

Kate offered them a small smile and a wave as she rocked on her heels. Clint - deciding he really didn't care at this point - made his way toward Natasha and crouched down in front of her, both his hands on her knees until he moved one up to her chin.

"You doing okay?" He knew the answer even before she responded.

She shook her head.

"Where'd you go?" He knew the answer to that, too.

Nothing would shake her quite like the place she'd come from, he was goddamn glad that she hadn't been able to screw with him. He'd had enough of that to last him a lifetime. Once was more than enough for him.

"Back." Natasha answered anyway. 

"It's alright, you're safe." He promised her.

Steve, Thor and Bruce paid no mind at all to either one of them as they settled down and begun to discuss a strategy, Tony however appeared curious or at least he did before Natasha shot him a glare; he put his hands up and then made his way over to join everyone else.

"We shouldn't have done this..." Natasha murmured softly.

"We had no other choice." Clint replied with a sigh.

"I know..." She conceded. It didn't mean she had to like it.

Here was their safe haven. 

"We're gonna have to finish this..." Her green eyes flicked to meet his blue.

He nodded, neither one of them liked the idea but what could they do? This was their fight one way or another and that goddamn thing would just wind up destroying the world if they didn't stop it and so, within days they were back out in the field facing impossible odds once again and the both of them held it together pretty well until she went missing.

"Anyone have eyes on Nat?" Clint questioned, sounding clearly frustrated.

No one did. He groaned.

"Where's my damn wife?" He muttered, forgetting all about the comms device.

"Your what?" Steve. Steve spoke.

"Later." Clint hissed.

"We need to find her." He didn't care about anything other than that.

If anything happened to her... He couldn't bear it and he knew it. Thankfully, Ultron was an arrogant son of a bitch and Natasha - on the video feed - left a message of her own, he smirked as he watched her and laughed.

"That's my girl." He turned and made his way over to the others.

"I know where we're going." He stated simply.

He didn't want to talk, not now. Not here. Not until he got her back and he knew that she was safe and they stopped this goddamn psychotic murderous robot.

And then Sokovia, then saving Wanda. Then? Then the rest of their team knew one thing for sure: Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff were married. Nothing was the same anymore as it was, but they did know that.

Neither Clint nor Natasha were sure how they felt about that, but they had no other choice.


	2. It's the fight of our lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sort of work through of how they found out she was pregnant & Natasha's pregnancy.
> 
> Sorry for the typos etc on dyslexic and sometimes I get a bit muddled heh. I do correct them though.

_New York 22 months ago:_

She'd been feeling like shit for _days_ now and it was strange; Natasha never got sick. She hadn't had so much as a cold since she was a child. She got the occasional headache but that was about it so for her to be sick? There was something wrong and she knew it but she'd put it down to stress and left it at that. Days turned into just over five weeks and she knew that she should probably see someone about it; training and keeping herself busy was one thing but she knew that she didn't have the energy for it. Everyone else was starting to notice, too.

Especially Clint.

He was like a worried mother hen, constantly asking her to go and see a SHIELD doctor just for his peace of mind if she wouldn't do it for herself. He knew how she felt about doctors, he knew how she felt about _anyone_ going anywhere near her to do any kind of tests but he'd eventually bugged her into it after promising her that no matter what, he wouldn't leave her side at all. He didn't, but she sure as hell wished he had at first.

The barrage of tests hadn't bothered her at first until she'd had to have bloodwork done and they wouldn't let Clint do it for her. She had to physically stop herself from punching someone. She wasn't afraid of needles or anything like that it was more that she was trained to react when someone came near her with any form of sharp implement and her training kicked in without her even realising it. Needles usually meant chemicals. It was an association that had her fighting to keep herself still the whole damn time.

It was over with in a matter of minutes but when you were trying to stop yourself from snapping someone's neck it felt like a whole hell of a lot longer.

After that, it had literally been a case of sitting around waiting for the results and she'd spent the whole time telling him that he was just being dramatic and there was _no_ reason at all to drag her in here but he'd kept up his mother hen act and told her that he'd rather be told by a doctor that he was worrying too much and that she was okay rather than risking something being wrong with her; in all the time he'd known her she'd never ever been like this so she could see why he was worried.

It didn't mean that she had to like it though. 

It was a good hour before the nurse meandered back in and she glanced between the two of them; she looked nervous which just made both of them more concerned.

"Is she okay?" Natasha could hear the fear dripping from Clint's tone as he spoke.

He reached for her hand almost as though he just wanted to be reassured that she was there. He was terrified and she could see it in his eyes. She glanced at the nurse.

"What's going on?" She was trying to hide her own worry.

"Agent Romanoff you're ah, pregnant." The nurse spoke eventually.

Natasha burst out laughing and shook her head.

"Your machines must be busted because that isn't even possible." She replied seemingly certain of what she was saying.

She wasn't so certain internally.

"We ran your bloodwork four times. It's a definitive positive..." The poor woman sounded utterly convinced their results were accurate despite her reaction.

Almost immediately Natasha's laughter died and she looked at Clint who looked somewhere between shocked and something else. Something she couldn't quite place and that bothered her.

"This can't-- I can't." That was what they'd told her when she'd been a teenager. She couldn't have children. Not ever. They'd ensured that.

"I remember the surgery, Clint." Did she though? She had a scar... 

She fought enough with trying to separate what was actually real as opposed to what had been implanted into her to serve their purposes over the years; she struggled more than she wanted to let on even now and it had been well over a decade since she had defected. 

Immediately Natasha begun to withdraw into herself again, half of the time she didn't even realise she was doing it but it kept her safe.

"The test says you are." He replied softly, leaning over to place a kiss on the side of her head.

"We've arranged an ultrasound for you. We'll bring the equipment along in a few minutes." With that, the nurse ducked out.

Natasha looked terrified. She pulled her knees to her chest. This wasn't possible. This could _not_ be possible. She wasn't-- It wasn't true, it was some goddamn stupid mistake somewhere in the lab and it'd be cleared up soon and she would _not_ allow herself to think otherwise. 

"It's just a screw up in the lab." She muttered.

"What if it isn't?" He questioned.

"Don't. Don't do that. You know that it isn't possible. I've told you all along it isn't and you said you were okay with that." He'd told her it didn't matter to him.

She fought to keep her tone measured and not sound like she was being overtaken by her emotions.

It didn't make him love her any less, wasn't that what he'd sworn to her years ago?

He'd promised her that it didn't matter. He'd promised her that whatever had happened back then didn't change a damn thing and he'd happily live a life with just the two of them. That was supposed to be what he wanted and now? Now the son of a bitch actually looked hopeful and Natasha resented him for it. She didn't want to, but she did.

It wasn't possible and she didn't care how much the nurse insisted otherwise. 

"I _am_ okay with it, Tasha. I'm just saying that it's okay to have a little bit of hope..." She shook her head defiantly though.

It was not okay. It was not fucking okay.

"I'm going back to my apartment tonight." She flicked her eyes down to her lap. Her hands were balled into fists in her lap.

This was going to get cleared up and he was going to be disappointed and she couldn't face him tonight after that. There was no way that she could and she had no idea what'd happen after that but she knew for tonight, she couldn't face him once all of this was sorted and squared away.

"Don't do that. You always run when you end up somewhere you can't control." He sounded hurt.

"Because if I stay with you tonight I'll have to see how disappointed you are all night and I just can't do that." Not right now.

The nurse - as promised - meandered back in with the equipment and set everything up, it was a strange procedure and one that Natasha found herself extremely uncomfortable with; she had her face turned away from the screen reading posters on the wall because she didn't see all that much point in looking at it when she felt so sure of the fact that there'd be nothing there to _see._ It didn't matter how much Clint wanted it to be. It didn't matter how much the nurse told her it was.

It. Wasn't. Real.

Until it was.

"Fuck, Tasha! Look!" Clint shook her arm. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and shook her head.

No.

"Tasha, trust me. Look." He sounded... Happy. Excited. 

He sounded like a goddamn child in a toy store kind of excited.

She turned her head then and on the screen was a small embryo that right now looked like nothing more than a little splodge on the screen with a heartbeat that looked strong and she felt like her own was going to quite literally stop beating. The nurse looked between the two of them and Natasha could have sworn she looked smug for a moment.

"I'd say you're around six weeks along. Congratulations both of you." The nurse spoke sounding rather pleased with herself.

Natasha found it annoying.

She felt like her heart was going to stop.

She was panicking.

It was real.

It wasn't some lab screw up, there was an actually growing little fucking person inside of her and she had no idea at all how to handle that. Bullets and people trying to kill her? That was easy compared to this. How the hell was this real?

"We're gonna have a baby!" Clint Barton sounded awestruck. 

"I can't do this." Natasha whispered gently. She placed her hands on her stomach.

There was immediately a look on Clint Barton's face that she hated. He recoiled like he'd literally been punched in the stomach. She breathed out a sigh.

"You know what I am." Her green eyes flicked to him.

"What if--" she couldn't finish that sentence. She was just giving in to fears that had already ruled enough of her life.

"No one will ever hurt our baby." There it was, that strength in her that he'd always loved and admired.

The resolution she had when it came to protecting the few things in her life that she had that meant anything to her, he just wished she'd show the same care with her own life; she'd always had a complete indifference to her own life. He knew she'd been taught to believe her life didn't mean all that much.

They were wrong.

"I won't tell you this is gonna be easy, Tash." Clint fought to even out his own tone then.

He wanted to scream from the fucking rooftops he was that excited.

"It ain't. It's gonna be unlike anything we've faced before but this kid? He or she is us. Ours. Half you and half me and I wanna give this a go, I wanna be the family we never got to have. You didn't have normal and neither did I. We had different layers of hell masquerading as childhood but we didn't have family, our baby will." 

He reached for her hand and entwined their fingers as he brought her hand to his lips and missed the back of it. He was glad the nurse had left.

"If he or she is born enhanced then that's fine too. If they're different like you, that's _okay_ , Tasha. It's okay." He didn't care at all if their baby was like her.

He could see clearly that she did and she was fucking terrified of it. There wasn't much that scared Natasha.

She referred to herself a lot as a genetic clusterfuck and he hated it. She wasn't. She was different but then a lot of the people in their lives were, this world wasn't black and white and not everyone that lived in it was perfectly human and that was okay. Not everyone that lived in it was normal. Luke Cage, Jessica Jones? They were just a few. They'd been given chemicals too, not like hers but they were enhanced because of experiments too.

He cared about the fact that they were getting a second chance none of them thought they'd ever get. He could read her, at least during the times where she wasn't purposely trying to hide how she felt and she was damn good at that but right now he could see that she was far too thrown by all of this to purposely shut down. She was trying her best to place it all in her mind, to figure out whether everything she'd been led to believe was a total lie or whether there was even an ounce of it that was true.

There had been that many covers over the years that he knew she was fractured at the best of times. She had spent years now trying to place it in her head, sorting it all out into columns of real and not real. Listing it meticulously in her head so that she didn't cross the two and she didn't wind up believing something she knew for a fact was a lie but this? This one was probably the one that hit her the hardest. 

What the hell was the scar on her stomach if it wasn't that? Her brow furrowed, the space between her eyes wrinkled as she worked away at her lip with her teeth. What. The. Fuck. She sat there and she shook her head, babbling away to herself in Russian. He'd learned a long time ago that she did it when she was frustrated. He knew exactly what she was saying but he didn't speak; she'd taught him years ago back when he'd ridden that whole 'Dumb carnie kid' thing a little too much and she'd been determined to prove that it was just a cover.

She'd been right, but then she already knew she would be. He was a lot smarter than he wanted people to think. He let her get it out of her system before he squeezed her hand gently.

"This kid is our shot to do better than what we had." 

"I don't even know what the fuck in my own past is real." She muttered, casting her eyes to the side.

He frowned softly at her. He shook his head. It didn't matter. Whatever had happened back then wasn't _now_ and while he knew it was important to her to figure it all out he knew that she had to focus on her future or every damn good possibility she had would pass her by.

"I'm real, Tasha. _We're_ real, _this_ is real." He reminded her.

Here and now was real. Who she was _now_ was real and they couldn't take that away from her. Her green eyes turned back to him as she searched his face desperately.

"What do I do if they-- What if they come after our baby?" Ah, he should've known that was what she was really afraid of.

"Then they'll die trying. You, me, the team? We ain't gonna let anyone hurt our kid. Hell I'm willing to bet even Nick will go out there again and kick some major ass just for you." Clint was trying to be reassuring, he really was. She shook her head though.

He rose a brow curiously.

"I don't want the team to know."

"Why not?" He was clearly concerned that she'd immediately shut that idea down.

"Because more people equals more chance for it to get out and become public knowledge. After New York and Sokovia we have everyone watching every move we make. If we involve everyone else then there's a chance that it'll become public. They already know where I am, I don't want them to know this, too." Her accepting that she was known publicly enough bothered her and after Sokovia they were on every watchlist in the world.

It was too dangerous. 

"Alright so no one outside of those that need to know get to know _anything._ I'm good with that. We drop off the grid, have our kid and we work out what to do from there. We'll be okay." Dropping off the grid wasn't new to either of them. Both of them had done it enough times.

"Okay." She replied with a small smile.

"Yeah?" He looked like an excited kid again. She couldn't help but chuckle.

"Yeah."

"We're gonna rock this!" He announced happily.

"Fuck, a baby!"

"I wouldn't go that far, but we're sure as hell gonna try." Or she was. He'd be a natural but her? She didn't even know who she was.

* * *

Natasha was one grumpy pregnant lady. Clint found it both amusing and terrifying all at the same time and while he couldn't wait to hold their child and know that they were safe? He did quite like to see the more vulnerable side to Natasha. He'd never seen her like that before; she walked around talking to her ever growing belly when she thought he wasn't paying attention to her, she sung quiet, soft Russian lullabies that - after much, much poking - she'd told him that she could remember someone singing them to her as a kid. It was another thing she wasn't sure was real but it was something nice.

Something nice for a change in amongst all the chaos and pain. It was something pleasant which didn't happen all that often.

He'd made sure to go with her to every appointment and she'd gotten incredibly grumpy about it at first; she'd told him that she could handle it on her own but after realising that it was simply his excitement and _not_ him trying to mother her, she'd been okay with him going. Especially to their ultrasounds; she'd insisted they keep an eye on the baby to make sure that nothing was different, or at least obviously so. Natasha was fretting about it more than she wanted to let on; she was honestly terrified that something would be wrong with this baby.

Their scan at around four and a half months had been the one where they'd found out they were having a baby girl and Clint had been awestruck; he supposed it was one of those things that most guys wanted: Daddy's little girl. He had an older brother but there were no other girls in his family and his brother was... Well... That was complicated. This little girl was his and Natasha's real shot at building the kind of life and the kind of family that none of them had ever had.

Natasha though seemed all the more worried; a girl just meant for sure that there was a target on her back. She could be another Little Widow, trained and used whereas if it were a boy there was far less of a chance of anything like that happening, though it could be worse... Boys didn't fair up all too well in this world of dangers and shadows either but the thought of her daughter going through the same hell she'd barely crawled out of alive scared the fuck out of her. Natasha wasn't good with any of this. She must have told herself she couldn't do this at least a million times a day but each and every movement and kick inside of her reminded her that she had to.

She owed it to this tiny little person to fight and fight harder than she'd ever fought before. This tiny little being did not ask to exist, this tiny little being was the one thing in life that Natasha had thought she'd forever be denied. SHIELD was of course running tests, no one really knew for sure what The Red Room had done to her because she'd never let them do tests until now and the only reason she was now was because it wasn't just her impacted by it all anymore.

Fury theorised it was the serum she'd been given to prolong her life that had healed her inside which made a lot of sense when she thought about it; a full blown hysterectomy would have put her out of commission for too long and they didn't have the kind of time to let them heal from that so she supposed it must have been something far less extreme but something that was supposed to be effective nonetheless and it had been very efficient indeed.

Until now.

She did _not_ want to tell Clint that finding out they were having a little girl had elevated her fears all the more nor did she want to tell him that the only reason she'd agreed when he'd wanted to find out at all was to measure just how much danger their child may or may not be in. She would _not_ allow her daughter to be turned into what she was, she would not allow her daughter to be trained to kill.

She may not have any choice in whatever chemical concoction ran through her effecting her child but she sure as hell had a choice in whether or not she'd ever endure what her mother had. Mother. To think of herself as someones mother was still such a strange and foreign concept to her. Clint had taken to the whole doting father thing though which she was still trying to remind herself was just natural and not him trying to piss her off.

He had always been protective of her but now he was a million times worse and half of the time she wanted to strangle him for it. He was overly excitable, hell even the dog had taken to cuddling up with her constantly with his big old head on her belly. She didn't mind that though, he was like a furry hot water bottle and she quite liked it.

Two more months slipped by and she was almost seven months pregnant by the time Clint hauled her out to the farm telling her that they were _not_ going to have a baby in an apartment in Bed Stuy nor were they going to have one in her apartment. She'd argued and told him that she had two spare rooms but he'd been adamant on them having an actual family home. Now, there were boxes everywhere and a dog that chased ducks around the fields. She wasn't even sure where the ducks came from.

Yep, he'd moaned at her every damn time she'd gone to lift a box and she'd threatened to throw the whole contents of it at his head if he didn't shut up about it and let her help; she did _not_ like being wrapped up in bubble wrap like some breakable China doll. That wasn't who she was. She'd take plenty of care but she wouldn't take to sitting around idly and letting everyone else do the work for her. Besides, if this was supposed to be her home too she wanted to try to set it up in a way she was happy with, too. 

Especially when he came home four days later with boxes and boxes of nursery furniture and all she'd been able to do was stare at him incredulously. He'd quite happily informed her that he'd had Kate - who was very excited about this whole Aunt-thing - help him with figuring out what to buy and then he threw a bear at her that she caught with a single hand and studied. She smiled at that. Embroidered across the front of it was _Little Princess_ in Russian.

"Thank you." She murmured softly. She'd been telling him for weeks now that she thought it was important for their baby to know both sides of her heritage.

At least the more sanitised parts of her mothers side. She felt _huge_ and it was hard for her to move but once again, she'd insisted on helping Clint assemble nursery furniture that she'd probably spend weeks trying to figure out if it was actually needed. Six hours later, six. Six hours it had taken Clint of moving everything around to make sure that the baby didn't get too much sun in her face or was faced too far away from the window so she couldn't look outside if she wanted to or that Natasha wasn't going to fall over everything and he'd finally decided that it was done and he was happy with it.

Natasha had given up about two hours ago and decided to go sit down, cooking a little person was tiring. She was tired all of the time these days and her internal organs were a football, not to mention the somersaults the kid did that literally knocked her sick. The headaches, too. Hormones were horrible, thankfully she wasn't that crazy pregnant lady that cried at _everything_ because Natasha could _not_ handle that level of weakness. That had never been her thing. 

She'd taken to sleeping on a futon downstairs by the time her ninth month rolled around because her back hurt too much to try to make the stairs every night and he'd told her more times than she could remember that he did not like the idea, but it had been only two weeks before she'd been hauled into SHIELD cursing the whole damn time and warning every single person she could that their daughter was _not_ to go on any records no matter what. She'd made them all swear.

It wasn't like they'd already been forced to sign paperwork by Nick or anything.

31 hours, 47 minutes and 36 seconds later, Natasha Romanov gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl that had tints of her mothers red hair and crystal blue eyes. By the time the small, crying bundle came into the world Clint looked like he could barely keep his eyes open and Natasha found herself falling into a whole new level of exhaustion that she hadn't even known existed and yet she held the infant to her chest and refused outright to let her go.

Except for when she'd given her to Clint so that he could hold his daughter. Already, Natasha felt protective and fiercely so in a way that she hadn't even thought was possible. Both of them had decided that Natasha would breastfeed through fear of the formula milk not holding enough nutrients for a child that could very well be enhanced like her mother. She was 12 hours old by the time the two of them had eventually settled on a name: 

Alina.

Russian like her mother but gently so. Needless to say, Clint had been thrilled when Natasha had informed him that she'd share a last name with her father. Maybe - just maybe - he had hope of convincing his wife to do the same someday, too.


	3. You're not the only one who's lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (this has taken me forever to post I forgot I even completed this chapter lmao!)
> 
> Steve shows up at their farm and he asks Natasha and Clint something he soon finds out he has to right to: To come back to work.

Natasha was not exactly the naturally maternal type in her eyes; Clint disagreed quite strongly. 

She struggled in her eyes with the smaller, simpler day to day things but she really didn't. She handled the night feeds like a pro; most of the time she'd left Clint to sleep and when he woke up in the morning he felt terrible for the fact that she'd done yet another night on her own. Most of those days, he'd find her curled up on the rocking chair in the nursery with the baby in her crib while Natasha - still sleep - kept a hold of one tiny hand; he loved mornings like that.

He kept pointing out all of the little things that she did very well and she still persisted in arguing about the ones that she'd done wrong very early on like when she'd forgotten diapers at the store because Alina hadn't let either of them sleep for three days straight or when she'd fallen asleep halfway through feeding her though Clint pointed out that the baby was perfectly safe and happened to be fond of falling asleep on her mother even if it had been for only about four minutes. Natasha had panicked though.

Then there was how much she hated herself for what she may very well have passed on to her child. Alina was the only chance that Natasha would ever have at normal and she knew it; she never wanted to do it again. She'd vowed that when she found out she was pregnant, she'd be their only child and that was that. She couldn't risk it if it turned out that she'd passed on whatever the hell lived inside of her onto her child, too. She hated the fact that the little girl may very well be condemned to a different life from one that even her own father could understand.

SHIELD, Ultron... It was chaos. It had been chaos for months and falling pregnant after all of that mess it was hard on her; she'd gotten restless after quite a while and by the time Alina turned six months old, Natasha felt about ready to go insane. Clint seemed to sense it because he'd tried his damn best to tell her that she could take freelance missions if she wanted to. She'd told him that it wasn't necessary because it'd put her and their daughter at risk if she happened to run across people she didn't want to while she was out there.

SHIELD was no longer sheltering them and her secrets - well most of them - were out in the open and guarding herself from that had become harder.

She tried her damn best to separate her past from the present she had here with this little family she'd attempted to build but every damn thing set her on edge. She didn't - and couldn't - let her guard down for even a second; she couldn't even remember the last time that she actually relaxed and just took a moment to breathe. Clint kept telling her that they were safe out here and that no one knew where they were save for their team who none of them had heard from in well over a year. She could relax.

He was wrong. She kept telling him he was wrong, letting your guard down and allowing yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security would get you killed and their lives were not a price Natasha was willing to pay. 

She was still trying to deal with the nightmares this whole Winter Soldier mess had kicked up inside of her. She didn't talk about it, not for weeks until Clint had eventually told her that she couldn't keep hiding things from him; they were married, she was supposed to talk to him and be open. She was _not_ supposed to shut him out no matter how hard it had seemed to her to open up and talk to someone. Clint was supposed to be the one person she could talk to no matter what.

It had been hard for her to tell him all about a past that she hadn't been ready to confront; she tried her best to make him understand that keeping it from him had been merely to separate herself from who she was back then in order to be who she was today. The side of her that she'd tried to lock away in a box was starting to claw its way out with the reemergence of a piece of her past that she sought to never cross paths with again; she wished - in her own way - that she could have meant what she said to Steve and that he wasn't saveable. She knew otherwise of course, but she couldn't go down that road herself.

She'd leave that to be Steve's fight but she'd guide him in every way she could even if he wouldn't know it was her doing it. She was the one pointing him to the right people, people she knew could provide him with information and people she knew could keep him safe at the same time even if she couldn't be out there to do it herself. She wouldn't throw herself into anything connected to her past because she knew now what she had to lose and that, that was why she'd lost touch with Steve Rogers for quite some time.

Bruce and Tony, well they were busy doing their own thing. She checked in with Tony from time to time out of habit more than anything else and to make sure that he wasn't going to create any more killer monsters or robots they were going to have to deal with. She was happy though that Wanda was doing well. 

Wanda seemed to spend more time here than at the New avengers facility which was likely safer for her anyway; she adored Alina and she was an incredible pseudo-Aunt. 

She'd kept in touch with Maria Hill on and off and she'd even learned Coulson hadn't been as dead as they'd previously thought and she'd been glad for that; Coulson made the seventh person besides her and Clint, Wanda and Kate, Maria and Nick that knew about Alina. She didn't mind so much about that; Coulson had ended up being quite thrilled at the news. 

It was nearing the middle of Fall when there had been a knock on the door of their farmhouse and a somewhat disheveled looking Clint Barton opened the door to a somewhat stressed looking Steve Rogers and he rose a brow, silently asking him what he was doing here before he shrugged his shoulders and stepped back, nudging the door open with his foot but casting a look back at Lucky who tried to run immediately forward. The dog stopped in his tracks.

"Come on in, just be quiet K?" He watched the confusion on Steve's face as he asked him to be quiet.

Clearly, he didn't understand but he would soon enough. Stepping inside, Steve Rogers released a sigh and glanced around. Immediately, his blue eyes fell on Natasha who was asleep in the chair with a baby rested against her chest wrapped in a woolen blanket; Clint had put the blanket over them about 10 minutes ago when the rocking chair had eventually coaxed the infant into sleeping. She'd been awake for two nights straight and both he and Natasha were exhausted.

Missions were easy compared to babies.

"What-" Steve cut off immediately. He turned confused eyes back to Clint.

"Nat and I had a kid. It's kinda why we've been MIA." He explained with a shrug as he pottered back toward the kitchen.

Coffee. Clint needed coffee and lots of it. Steve followed him simply because the very last thing he wanted to do was awaken a sleeping baby and have a potentially furious Natasha to deal with. Steve wasn't unaware of the fact that she could be... Temperamental when she wanted to be or you know, downright scary. That worked too. 

"Congratulations, I guess? Belated evidently." Steve's brow furrowed as his eyes flicked between Clint - who was now on his second espresso - and Natasha.

"We decided to keep it all off book. Natasha's past is ah, complicated? So we had a lot of stuff to consider. She wanted to reach out a couple times, we both did but it was safer if we didn't. We couldn't risk the wrong people finding out and after Ultron Nat doesn't ever want a damn thing on file about her again." Which no one could blame her for.

"She blew a lot when SHIELD fell but that hit her more I think 'cause of the whole 'messing with her head' thing. We know it wasn't Wanda's fault. She's great with the baby and she's like family but Ultron poked at nerves Nat didn't want anyone to know about." He explained hoping at least he was doing a half decent job of it.

He probably wasn't. Explaining stuff wasn't Clint's strong suit.

"We came out here, had our baby and we've just been mostly keeping our heads down ever since. We get told what we need to know so, I'm guessing you're here because of Tony backing the Sokovia accords?" Clint commented the whole thing so casually.

Steve looked thrown.

"Uh, yeah, yeah actually I am." Naturally he'd want to know where both Clint and Natasha stood on the matter.

"Well I ain't signing it." Barton pushed away from the kitchen counter.

"Want something to drink?" He offered, Steve shook his head.

"What about Nat? Where do you think she'll stand?" Steve honestly sounded worried.

Clint let out a small laugh and shook his head before he clapped Steve on the shoulder.

"Tasha isn't exactly the _Let the government tell me what to do_ type. We have a kid to protect, she won't sign anything that puts her in danger." First and foremost, they'd be parents that would protect their kids.

"The whole team is divided here." Steve sounded almost heartbroken as he spoke.

Clint knew the team was the only real sense of belonging that Steve had especially after he'd learned about the whole Bucky-thing. He knew that had been rough on him, hell it had been rough on Natasha and to this day Clint didn't know the whole story there but he did know enough to know asking about it was a bad idea.

"Looks like we gotta come in, huh?" Clint didn't sound thrilled but it had always been inevitable.

"Guess the plus side is babies are a good distraction from conflict. No one can be mad around babies, it's one of those weird things. They make people all gooey and soft." Barton grinned then. 

"We're doing what?" Natasha's voice had both men turn to face her.

Steve offered her a sheepish smile and Clint made his way over to take the infant from her arms who - thankfully - hadn't woken up properly yet which meant that they could lay her down. Natasha looked somewhat sleepy but still very much the same, she hadn't aged a day since he'd met her and while he found that curious he couldn't exactly say much about it. He'd learned nothing in this world was ever what it seemed including Natasha.

She'd made that clear enough when they'd been working together.

Natasha rose from the chair as Clint scooped the baby up in his arms and she stretched out, her shoulder clicking as she did and she shook out her arms before she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee; it was pretty much the only way they got through the day these days then again that hadn't been all that much different from her SHIELD days so it really wasn't much of a change for her. She had her red hair scooped up out of her face and Steve presumed it was also to stop the child from pulling at it.

She leaned against the counter as she studied him and she found herself frowning out of worry, she could already tell there was a whole hell of a lot that Steve Rogers wasn't telling her; he looked older somehow from the pain and exhaustion in his eyes and she offered him just a small smile. Kindness - she'd learned - could go a hell of a long way, contrary to what most people believed Natasha was _not_ a robot. She cared very much for the people in her life.

"What happened? It's more than just Tony and the Accords." She questioned gently.

Steve released a sigh then and he looked up at Natasha, she was a hell of an agent, a hell of a partner out there in the field and she knew just how to read people because her training was both extensive and impressive so he knew there was no use at all in lying to her.

"I found him, at least on and off. He moves around a lot..." He spoke carefully, he watched Natasha for her reaction.

There was something underlying there and he knew it but she wasn't willing to talk about it. Instead, she inhaled a breath and nodded her head. She knew who he was talking about without even asking. She'd always, always care for Bucky Barnes and she'd help Cap free him from his captors but there was no way in hell she was going to drag herself back into that world. She'd be a friend, she'd help him to recover but that was it. She wouldn't immerse herself into it all any more than she had to.

She had a child now, a little life that depended on her mother coming home safe and that world wasn't - and never would be - safe.

"People that run the way he does are running from something bad but you already know that. We're trained to disappear, we're trained to keep moving because it's the safest way to stay alive. He'll be somewhere between knowing who he is and still convinced he's what they turned him into." She furrowed her brow as she spoke, she was being more honest now than she had been in years.

Steve frowned as he listened to her speak, it wasn't just her speaking as someone that had once escaped from monsters and he knew it. This was Natasha, she kept things hidden until there came a time where that information was needed.

"If he's found in the middle of all of this, they'll put him in prison for what he's done Steve. They'll throw away the key because that's what the government wants to do to people like us now: They either want to control us or lock up the ones that they can't." She was more than aware of that already which was why when Wanda had showed up here upset about the whole thing she'd promised her that she wouldn't let it happen.

"What aren't you telling me?" Steve asked the question carefully. 

"I already told you I'm a spy, I lie for a living." Or she did anyway, she wasn't sure what she was anymore.

Still, her lips held a smirk before she shrugged her shoulders.

"I know that world, I _came_ from that world, I know just how much of a mess your brain is afterward. The programming starts to wear off but nothing makes sense to you. It's all fractured and distorted and you go back to places you remember even if you know they aren't safe just because it's familiar. You find safehouses, you check old drops to see if anyone you trust has reached out to you and in that world, it's hard to trust _anyone._ I'll help you, but I can't get too involved." She warned him gently.

Her green eyes were clouded with something that he couldn't read, a pain there that he recognised because it mirrored his own in some ways but he didn't understand it, he _couldn't_ understand it because he didn't know enough about her past to understand why it'd make her feel the way this was.

"So that's my deal to you: I'll help you, I'll do whatever it takes to help you but I won't throw myself to the wolves for your sake or for his. My kid is what matters. We'll come in and I'll play whatever part you need me to play but you have to understand Steve, I won't do anything that makes sure I can't come home to her."

Steve nodded then.

"I need to know what Tony's play is here."

Natasha let out a small laugh.

"I can play Tony Stark, I've done it before." And indeed she had. He didn't trust her at first but after Sokovia, he'd changed that.

"And another thing? I need you to come to Peggys funeral." Heartbreak painted Steve's expression then.

Natasha stepped forward and pulled him into a hug.

"Of course." She knew how much he'd loved Peggy.

It looked liked indeed they were both going back to work, a part of her was glad for that and another was scared shitless. Being a parent had changed everything for her, she wasn't just fighting for her sake anymore she was fighting for someone else's too.

She had to come home.


End file.
